Slew of new Clinton documents released

The National Archives has released a large assortment of previously withheld documents related to the Clinton presidency. Corey Dade and Howard Fineman join to discuss this, as well as the news of Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy.

Politics_Democrats

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>a political story developing right this moment out of the
clinton presidential library
. just moments ago that library released 7,500 pages of documents from the
clinton administration
. that is double the number made available including reports the
middle east
peace summit and the
rwandan genocide
and there's even a section on oprah. should make for good reading. this follows on a
big day
for
hillary clinton
yesterday. first at the
clinton global initiative
event in new york yesterday and event breaking the grass ceiling. they sh a moving exchange with a undocumented woman.

>>for first time publicly i want to say i'm an
undocumented immigrant
. [ applause ]

>>i want to say that it's been extremely difficult for me empower myself in america because i came here illegally when i was 5.

>>that was incredibly brave and i thank you for doing that. because it's important to put ourselves in other people's shoes, that's one of the
big hopes
i have is that we can get back to being a country where people can understand what others are going through and have empathy for it and try to help each other.

>>really heart felt moment but hitting on what could be a major campaign issue.
clinton
was at the event with her daughter chelsea who made news of her own.

>>mark and i are very excited that we have our first child arriving later this year. [ applause ]

>>former secretary
clinton
's reaction on twitter, my most exciting title yet, grandmother to be. with more now i'm joined by the contributor editor at the root and
howard fineman
for "the
huffington post
", i'll start with you. we'll get to the baby in a moment. in addition to all of the above, there's other
clinton
news, she has her memoir, the title will be "hard choices", part of the press release describing the book says secretary
clinton
and
president obama
had to decide how to repair fractured alliances and address a global
financial crisis
. how much credit do you think she'll get in the long run for something like winding down two wars?

>>i think she'll get some. but certainly not major amounts. i think her stew ardship of the
state department
will be known primarily for just that word, stewardship as opposed to
trail blazing
or world historic alley vents. that fits in who
hillary
is in certain respects.
hillary
is not -- in spite of her role as a
glass ceiling
breaker in many ways, and so forth, she's thought of i think for her stability, for her smarts, for her doggedness and her sense of responsibility. and the whole history that's tumbling out now out of
little rock
and so forth, she brings all of that history with her. not because of any one pivot alley veevent, but her pitch will be about her service and to include everybody in that village she was always talking about.

>>the area where i think she would be seek to be seen as a
trail blazer
is
soft power
advancement, advancement of women and youth, launched an office -- i ran at the
state department
focused on
young people
of the arab spring. will the
foreign policy
elite buy into something of significance, that remains to be seen. cory, what do you think of the accusations that she was the most hawkish member of this administration? do you think that can help rather than hurt her?

>>i don't think it's anything that will hurt her. when you think about who her main opponents will be, there will be people on right and they hardly ever score points against democrats who have proven to be hawkish or firm on
national security
.
barack obama
's record and winding down the war and and killing
osama bin laden
,
et cetera
, guarded him against attacks from the right about his
foreign policy
. coming into
hillary
's potential run, i think this won't be much of a major claim. i think there will be an effort to sort of resurrect the benghazi issue, but that i think will be the focus as far as her
foreign policy
experience will be concerned.

>>howard, what about the timing of this book? obviously
robert gates
took a lot of flak for writing a insider s account of the obama administration while he was still sitting. do you thinkhe'll face the same criticism?

>>she'll fail some criticism but her desire and need is to get her version of events out there as she can. and basically summarize in her own way the history that she's lived so far. she's not a kid. she's got a past. she's got an extensive one. she has lots of experience. she's had lots of insider knowledge and power going back to when she first began the mutual ascent into national politics with
bill clinton
. so she's got to tell that story and got to tell it in her own way. if she's going to run because she's going to have that whole history with her. rather than have other people pick it apart
piece by piece
and focus on benghazi and focus on episodes with her husband, she has to tell the whole story in her way and it makes perfect sense. she may get criticism from it but she's willing to take that in exchange for laying down her own narrative.

>>i think it is something that when she began on the project made sense for her personal little on a lot of levels on terms of her forever legacy but something that's probably necessary to
set the record straight
politically regardless of what comes next. cory, everyone is exploding over the baby news, saying, quote, a grandchild could heighten the pole of history for
clinton
and the sense she owes it to the daughters of the future generations to walk the rest of the path towards becoming the most powerful woman in history. i mean, god, that's describing a lot of significance to
chelsea clinton
--

>>no pressure there.

>>do you think there's anything more to this story than
chelsea clinton
literally having a child?

>>everything about the clintons in general is subject to almost tabloidie political coverage. it gives new significance to baby bump, people think can can help her among voters. there are new polls out now showing that her old sort of favorables and unfavorables are starting to be restored now that she's out of the
department of state
. and her negatives are significant. and those will be issues -- those will be a vulnerability that her opponents will try to exploit. one of the knocks on her is that she is not a compassionate figure. and part of it is sexism. we tend to expect more from female politicians than we do male. so seeing her as a grandmother could potentially soften her image among some voters.

>>and also of course that moment today was very emotional and accessible. we'll see what kind of effect that has on her reputation. the poll numbers are changing rapidly, the polls you mentioned from fox news saying her popularity may be flagging slightly even as the gop is on the rise we'll look at in the coming days. thank you so much for joining us.